The Queen of Versailles (***1/4)

Twenty-six thousand square feet. Enough room for a couple, eight kids, a nanny, and assorted staff. Enough room to host a reception for all 50 Miss America contestants. Could anyone want more? Apparently, David and Jackie Siegel could. When Lauren Greenfield began her documentary, David was the “time share” king who had recently opened his greatest project, a skyscraper in his adopted hometown of Las Vegas. He boasted of having personally gotten George W. Bush elected president. Jackie, his third wife, was an ex-beauty queen who had borne him a new family of seven young children, though a Filipino nanny did a lot of the less-fun stuff. (They had taken in another girl, Jackie’s niece.) And 26,000 feet was just not big enough.

The Seigels’ new place, nicknamed after the French palace, would become a boondoggle symbolic of the Great Recession, and David’s attempts to maintain his empire, and Jackie’s to reform lifestyle, would give Greenfield’s film an unexpected story arc. David Siegel has meanwhile sued Greenfield over her editing choices, which he argues exaggerate the financial troubles, but all things considered, they don’t come off too badly. At least, they seem more relatable, less hateable, than you would think if all you knew was the bare facts above. Jackie, who is the main character, may not be the world’s best mother—she freely confesses she wouldn’t have had so many kids if she needed to actually raise them herself—and she may be a bit childlike herself, but she’s no Leona Helmsley figure. That is, she’s pleasant to spend time with.

In the end, money, especially money one comes into suddenly, as by lottery or marriage, may not change a person so much as allow a person to indulge the personality one already had. That’s the sense I get here. It’s probably just as true of reality-show contestants, and that’s the vibe of this documentary.

IMDb link

viewed 8/22/12 7:20 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 8/13–9/15/12

Potiche (***1/4)

“Trophy housewife” is how the title gets translated in the English subtitles of this breezy French import. Catherine Deneuve, who’s won some trophies of her own, plays the title role. As the wife of a 1970s umbrella magnate, she’s learned to live with being ignored, condescended to, and probably cheated on by her wealthy spouse (Fabrice Luchini). Unfortunately for him, while she tolerates his ill treatment, his factory employees won’t, and their threats to strike will have unexpected repercussions on his family, which includes a left-leaning son who sympathizes the workers and a right-leaning daughter who doesn’t. Turns out, the housewife is the only one who can step in and make peace.

This of course would be a creaky storyline today, but director and screenwriter François Ozon has kept the setting of the play he’s adapted, and he’s also filmed it in a style that will remind viewers of a time long ago, when feminism still seemed new, young women had Farrah Fawcett haircuts, and communist mayors of small French cities were, presumably, common. He’s co-opted the bright look of 1970s television, utilizing a groovy font for the credits, a period-sounding score (reminding me of Marvin Hamlisch’s in The Informant!), and even touches like a split-screen scene.

Ozon’s movie occupies the territory between homage and parody, not unlike his 8 Women, which also featured Deneuve. Thus, while well-plotted and relatively realistic, it’s also whimsical and comic in its retro stylings and acting. The communist mayor, by the way, is played by Gerard Dépardieu, the onetime leading man who’s made a Brandoesque transformation, weight wise. The potiche turns out to have a past. Deneuve fell for Dépardieu 30 years ago in The Last Metro, but here, she turns him down. Complications ensue, all in good fun.

IMDB link

viewed 4/23/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 4/24/11